Man, time flies by really fast, doesn't it? Well, we are on the cusp of a new record for 2020 with 21 dead so far. The question then becomes will the 2021 edition be able to top our current list? We will see, but for the time being let's go over the rules, shall we?
THE RULES
Rules
1. Please send a list of celebrities you wish to vote for to Joey Russ, during the time period of 27th November to the 31st December 2020. The list must have a minimum of 20 names on it, and a maximum of 50.
Please send them by either PM or the Shadow List thread, not by email, semaphore, Morse code, Deathlist live chat, animated corpses, text messages, or any other means of communication you can think of. And you may only submit via 1 of those two methods above, NOT BOTH METHODS!
2. Your 1st choice will gain 50 points, 2nd 49, etc etc to 50th which will gain 1 point.
3. When the deadline passes, all of the points that an individual celebrity gain will be added together, and the top fifty celebrities with the most points overall will go on the Utterly Unofficial Forum List.
4. Feel free to add substitutes at the bottom of the list, which will only be counted if one of your fifty die before January 1st 2021. If for example your number one pick is such a smart one they die before January 1st, then I will give 50 points to your 2nd pick, and so on until 1 point is given to the first substitute.
5. Do try to make the picks as "Deathlisty" as possible. More Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and less Dewayne "Monsanto Man" Johnson, if you know what I mean. Someone likely to score an obit with one of the major English language news outlets.
6. The deadline for sending in entries is 31st December 2020 at 9 pm GMT. That's 4pm New York Time (31st December) and 8am (1st Jan) Melbourne time to help out non-Brits. This earlier dead line is so there's enough time to complete the list before the new year as well as enjoying some extra time off as well.
7. This is essentially a forum game without a winner. It does however put the long held notion by some that the combined minds of the forum know better than the Committee to the test.
8. Who picked whom will remain anonymous. Unless the person announces it of course.
9. The paranoid probably shouldn't send in their DDP unique hopefuls. Whilst I do not intend to steal them away, it would make no sense: if the person then showed up on the list, their chances of being unique would be very slim indeed!
10. To keep to the Deathlist spirit, only the top 25 ranked celebrites from the current list of Crowdsourced Deathlist 2020 survivors will be used: Alex Trebek, Prince Philip, Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, Mikhail Gorbachev, George Alagiah, David Gulpilil, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Beverly Cleary, Betty White, Henry Kissinger, Leslie Phillips, Bob Barker, Glynis Johns, Larry King, Rosalynn Carter, Sidney Poitier, Pope Benedict, Dilip Kumar, Tom Smith, Willie Nelson, Harry Reid, Lata Mangeshkar, Joanne Woodward, Jimmy Greaves, Prunella Scales, Eva Marie Saint, Clarissa Eden, Desmond Tutu
Some names there I don’t think anyone expected to be in contention for 2021, but there’s still time in 2020 yet.
10a) Our actual collated list will stick to the "25 from the previous year" rule.
10b) As a result, if our top fifty, after all votes have been counted, has more than twenty-five of the 2020 survivors (named for ease in Rule 10), then the lowest ranked excess survivors will be axed from the list in favour of The Fifty-First ranked celebrity and so on...
10c) Since we don't know if that'll be an issue until I actually do the counting, voters don't need to worry about limiting their personal lists to 25 survivors. It'd be nice if they did, but that's life.
11) Please pick living people. Folk do die before 1st January, but there were a few cases of people dead for a number of years chosen last time. Please do not pick animals, or ISIS prisoners, or kids, or any of the usual no go areas.
Anyhow, enjoy. Or not.